Too Much Security

Banks are getting more and more kiasee. Sigh... I guess if you look at things on the bright side, it's good. Additional protection to your assets. But sometimes too much measures makes it an overkill! Technology is suppose to simplify things, not complicate matters and make you life messier! It's not as if our lifes aren't complicated enough as it is, with the zillions of passwords to remember - emails, logins, pin numbers etc.. Hey, my brain isn't the size of Einstein's!

My first encounter with excessive security is here in US. Without a social security number (SSN-given to tax payers), it's so hard to get things done. Some banks don't even allow you to open an account with them. My bank - Bank of America, does thankfully. However, the transactions that I can do online is very limited with the lack of the SSN. E.g. I can't do fund transfers. So every month, G and I takes turns to go down to the banks personally to transfer our allowance to each other, and even then the maximum transfer without 2 forms of photo ID is $1000 only! Thankfully, I can at least still make bill payments online, which really helps in settling all the bills.

I thought that only US banks are excessively secure.. Guess I'm wrong. Singapore is heading the same way. Maybe because there are too many people with nothing better to do than to hack into bank websites or have evil minds phising your info. Singapore banks are starting to implement a 2nd security measure for internet banking. Essentially you are given a 'token' or via sms, you obtain an unique random one-time password that you have to key in after the login with your standard username and password. I.e. Now, you have to carry that darn 'token' thing everywhere you go if you wish to access your internet banking account on the go. To me, it kind of defeats the idea of internet banking. Wasn't internet banking created for the convenience of having banking services whereever and whenever you want (provided you have access to the internet of cos)? But now, without that darn 'token', you can't do anything! Maybe the idea of SMS password is still not too bad. At least most people have mobile phones (and often can't live without them), so now you just have to pray hard that your mobile communications provider has fast prompt SMS service! Hmm.. multi parameter requirements just to use internet banking. Yeesh.

Okay, I guess I'm crying out such a fuss because being here in US... I have no access to those tokens and SMS, unless my family mail them over. Worst thing is I have accounts with 3 different banks and I do regular money transfers between the accounts online. How convenient! Right now, I have no access to two of my accounts, hence I can't check if the money transfers went through properly. Who knows.. maybe my >$1000 transfer went into another person's pocket! Ahh...